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Child marriage

Child marriage is a global problem that affect millions of children, mostly girls, across the world. Child marriage has numerous adverse effects on the overall well-being of children who are mentally, psychologically, emotionally and physical unfit for married life. It constitutes a violation of child rights and must be abolished. It deprives those involved of education and health services, the chance to learn skills and to develop their personalities.

Since girls are more likely to marry young than boys, and illiterate girls are significantly more at risk of child marriage; Save the Children works with gender transformative programmes that are focused to enroll and retain girls in schools.

Ending child marriage requires the joint effort of all organisations from community level to national and global level. Save the Children works in networks and in collaboration with different stakeholders and sees child marriage as a crosscutting issue that should be mainstreamed into all development work. A reduction in child marriage, FGM and sexual violence will reduce the levels of maternal and infant mortality due to under-age pregnancies and unsafe pregnancies and delivery.

Documents (256)

The Government of Bangladesh (GoB) was one of the first countries to sign and ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). As a follow-up, the GoB submitted the first report on the situation of children in Bangladesh in the yea

Human Rights in China (HRIC) welcomes the various laws that the Chinese government has passed in recent years pertinent to the rights of children and infants, although the gap between laws and regulations and the reality remains unacceptably wide. HRIC ha

Supplementary report by The Concerned for Working Children (CWC) to India's country report on the implementation of the UN Convention on the rights of the Child. This supplementary report constitutes a brief critique of the report submitted by the Governm

This paper reports on a qualitative study on social norms and child marriage in rural Cameroon, a country with high prevalence of child marriage but largely ignored in the literature. Study participants (n = 80) were men and women from four different ethn

Publisher

Al-Azhar University, International Islamic Center for Population Studies and Research, Cairo (2) Apply Al-Azhar University, International Islamic Center for Population Studies and Research, Cairo filter

ODID, Oxford Department of International Development (1) Apply ODID, Oxford Department of International Development filter

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (1) Apply Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights filter

Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children (1) Apply Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children filter

Office of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children (1) Apply Office of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children filter